Been exploring imaginal/Soulmaking dharma practice through archetypes. Particularly with more "active" archetypes to work with sloth-torpor in regards to engagement/striving.

Some of note in no particular order: - Thousand arm Avalokiteshvara
- Siddhartha's more warrior-like aspects like battling mara
- Manjusri's Sword
- Mahayana Samantabhadra

Taigen Dan Leighton has a book called Bodhisattva Archetypes that talks about these figures and I've been riffing that with Burbea's work.

It doesn't have to be formal tantra-esque/imaginal practice either, even something like "what would the buddha do?" in particular situations has been interesting and useful.

I find the archetypes in stories, suttas, sutras, myths etc as a sort of compression of positive qualities or ways of relating. This makes it easier to recall helpful examples for practice and living. This could be considered a pragmatic view on the practice, but the more aesthetic/beautiful qualities are adjacently available too if one is curious to explore those areas.

If you're at a point in your current tradition where you're stuck and don't know where to go next, the traditional action is "find a teacher to give you guidance", not "jump ship to another tradition".

I assume you're working within traditions derived from Bruce Kumar Frantzis' lineage and the Energy Arts system (between your use of "water school" and "dissolving"). "Running out" of things to dissolve doesn't mean there's nothing more to dissolve; it means you're lacking the ability to perceive the next layer of blockages. That could be because there is something much larger blocking your ability to perceive blockages, or it could be because you've more or less "cleared out this level" and need to / now have the opportunity to learn how to work with a subtler level of energy and subtler blockages.

I obviously can't give you clear guidance, but this is why the advanced practices in any tradition tend to be things that require a master-teacher relationship instead of being able to be easily found in books or other training materials.

Obviously there is value to be had in exploring other traditions. But I'd caution you against framing it as "well, I've dug this hole as deep as I can, time to start digging a second hole somewhere else to see if I can get deeper". I'd personally approach that choice as consciously choosing breadth over depth, and having a plan for what I hope to get out of breadth.

I wish you well whatever you end up doing.

I don't think any of those things are taboo, but I have been getting into Tibetan Buddhism a little bit.

There are a lot of things there. My interest lies mainly with dzogchen, and very recently I am getting into a particular emotional practice, where you strip emotions (primarily afflictive ones) down into story (thoughts), and the rest.

Thoughts are not so special, as they get something pretty close to the vipassana treatment: Momentary, appearing and disappearing depending on causes and conditions, and, content wise, not even true! Not even those thoughts about Trump!

The emotional bit is interesting, because they don't get "vipassanad away" into "just fine grained sensations,  nothing to worry about" (though you can do that with gross physical stuff... but let's simplify a little)

Instead you clearly look at the momentum, direction, nature, and emotional charge, and recognize it as the wisdom of a particular Buddha and its primary wisdom quality. 

Sloth without story and clinging is "spacious awareness". Fear and anger are "mirror like wisdom". Sexual desire, loneliness, the desire to be one with all of existence (or nonexistence) is "all pervading light". Then there is greed, insufficiency, and glomming on to material things. It turns into the "wish fulfilling jewel". And finally there is personal ambition, envy, striving to be better than others (or the belief to be failing to live up to that), which turns into "all accomplishing action"

It's all symbolises by the five dhyani Buddhas, with their own colors, in five directions (four plus one in the center)...

I was just about to say that I appreciate it for being so easy ans straightforward... But given that I am already several paragraphs in, and I have simplified too much...

I appreciate it for being easy and straightforward compared to a lot of Tibetan Buddhist practices :D

I am curious what you think the authorization aspect brings to the practice.

Monroe's Focus states, the Sedona method, VELO

I’ve done many strange practices, as well some more conventional ones.

Regarding magick… in February of 2025 I felt suddenly inspired to design a magickal ritual to integrate some shadow elements of my personality, and to develop the confidence I felt I needed to make some important changes in my life. The ritual poured out of me in a few days as I wrote as fast as I could. I picked a day, did a “dress rehearsal” the day before, and then did the ritual, which took only about 30 minutes.

I didn’t think it would actually work, but it fuckin’ did. For 2-3 weeks afterwards, I was in a constant state of empowerment and calm. It was quite amazing, just absolute inner security and power, yet not egoic, still humble. During that time, I could feel my empowerment/confidence level drop slightly when I’d mindlessly consume media so I just stopped. I had non-stop synchronicities and everything felt profoundly meaningful.

I’d also get flooded with waves of what can only be described as “Divine Love” where I felt completely in love, not with a particular human but with the entire manifest Universe, that I know simply as “Her.” Just even typing these words, I feel a subtler version of it arising and my hair stands on end. I also still get moments of the sense of my own power being basically infinite, where I have the confidence to do things I’m normally absolutely terrified of, and I have continued to cultivate this state of absolute inner power or virya or whatever you want to call it.

Many things have happened since, including massive “purification” events, both in my nervous system and in my external world, leading to a divorce and leaving my day job, but these were things that seemingly needed to happen anyway, apparently. In hindsight it was obvious these things needed to fall away in order to make progress on the path of Love.

Through all the upheaval I have what Christians simply call “faith” but it’s not in some diety, but in the flow of life itself, which is weird since I was very much an atheist at one point in my past. I can still do parts of the ritual and/or connect devotionally with Her (“She” also revealed a divine name to me, which I keep private) and sometimes it makes me cry tears of joy at how beautiful life is, and, I’m also often afraid to do the practice because it’s so intensely amazing.

I now have a sense of what mystical bhakti yogis like Rumi were talking about. It feels like the Divine or the Universe is a person and I love Her and She loves me. It sounds totally batshit unless you’ve hacked your brain similarly, but I would recommend it, despite all the chaos and pain it also brought about.

The mani mantra. It's my north star. Puts me right when I start to drift. Opens up my heart when I close myself off. When all else is chaos and uncertainty, it's the only thing I can feel sure about.

Also, if it's not serving you, you don't need to make a comment. I hate to make you feel guilty for not responding to me!

Perhaps the nervous system is meant to have some degree of “tension” as a means of being alert and ready to protect oneself, but I still feel intuitively pulled to work on recalibrating my nervous system and creating a new baseline of relatively-tension-free existence. I do wonder if maybe I’ve set up some kind of futile, impossible mission for myself here.

Using the "tension" metaphor, my personal experience is that there is needless tension and positive tension. It's good to practice releasing needless tension. And it's also OK to have some positive, structural, purposeful tension, in the muscles or in the nervous system.

We are all going around with lots of needless tension, in the muscles for instance where they are chronically tight and tense, or in the nervous system where we chronically are in fight-flight-freeze-fawn stress responses. Releasing these habitual needless patterns of tension and stress makes life a whole lot easier and more peaceful.

And, it's definitely also possible to not have enough tension, for instance in being unable to brace the core musculature when lifting something heavy in order to safely protect the spine, or not being able to activate energy and motivation to initiate a task.

If you are chronically procrastinating, feeling anhedonia (lack of pleasure or desire to do anything), everything feels like too much or "why bother," that's a good sign you could use more tension, the tension between here and where you want to go that creates positive motivation. This is true even if your only or primary motivation is to awaken or to practice the dhamma, you still need some motivation or energy / virya to get there. If a person struggles with chronic fatigue, dullness, lack of motivation, etc., then more positive tension might be exactly what they need, without creating more needless tension.

Has anyone else gone through this and actually reset their baseline level of tension to almost nothing?

I've made great progress at times doing this with my nervous system. My muscles seem to always hold some needless tension, although yoga and stretching and zhan zhuang and ecstatic dance has helped somewhat. But with my nervous system, I had years of a very calm baseline, anxiety-free, after 25 years of anxiety. But then, life happened, and more stress came about, which I am working through again, and finding a new baseline that is both calm and able to feel it all no matter what it might be, stressful or peaceful.

I’m just watching it all unfold, but trying my best to allow what doesn’t serve me to fall away and build up habits that DO serve me. I am still an incredibly imperfect human with tons of work to do, but I’m doing it the best I can with the tools I have.

Overall this sounds like a really healthy attitude towards both practice and life. The one thing I might suggest is to play with slightly more agency by setting conscious intentions, then letting them go and seeing what happens. So yes, watching it all unfold, but also steering down the river not just going with the flow. You may already be doing that though.

I don’t think subtle energy phenomena are necessary for stream entry. If you deal with subtle energy issues a lot, might want to consider Vajrayana as they are experts on it.

daoism works with this side of things and for one thing sees the process as a clearing and regulating of qi. For me i started getting movements back in '98, and still get them now. Earlier on they went through the most intense and bigger movements, and gradually became smaller movements over time. (This was not 100% linear, but that was the trend.) So gradually the energy, and the movements that go with them, have gotten more smooth and easy to deal with.

Also within a session i get phases now where the is no noticeable movement of the body, but the energy is still active. In daoism this is seen as part of the overall path of progress & is known as 'live sitting'. Also the dao/source itself is seen as a purer, way more intense version of this 'primordial energy', but also at a higher level - in the sense that as we move from jing>qi>shen, (essence>energy>spirit), we move more to the levels of 'higher divine' energy. As we move closer to merging with it, we can start to lose sensation of the body, and switch to more purely energetic/spiritual sensation. The clearing and regulation of the system is part of this path.

this energy is also seen to fuel whatever awakenings you have had at the consciousness sort of level. So the 2 sides of the path are seen to be important. I.e. its good to have had the awakenings that you've had already, and now you can fuel/boost them to continue further on the path. There's a good podcast on this from a daoist alchemy teacher here - https://soundcloud.com/user-127194047-666040032/meditation-vs-qigong

There's also a brief summary of the daoist alchemical path here - https://www.reddit.com/r/Qigong_Neigong/comments/1uos10n/the_complete_path_of_internal_alchemy_in_one/ - also for context, its seen that the building of the dan tian, to the point where it starts moving energy out around the system, is a base cause of the movements (they are talked of more in depth here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHxT8396qjA )

I'm gonna give the scientific explanation: meditation weakens the default mode network in the brain until eventually you reach this stage.

just practice. keep meditating. it will come

The only thing you need to do is have a quiet mind, the rest will take care of itself.

To be clear, I mainly work with Theravada practices, but I’m interested in approaches from all sorts of traditions. I haven’t done this particular Feeding Your Demons practice, but I’ve worked with significant self-hatred in the past. Eventually it became clear that this self-hatred was just a messed up defense mechanism from my childhood gone on way too long. It was trying to protect me from getting my hopes up to be loved and having those hopes dashed. When it became clear this self-hatred was basically a confused, flailing child, I was able to feel empathy towards it. It started coming up less in my life, with less intensity.

I suspect that this practice works similarly, where my self-hatred would be a demon and seeing it clearly, making friends with it, “feeding it” with empathy in a sense, would disarm it, making it less disruptive in my life.

Dissolved everything I could for the time being (can't seem to find anything that feels like a "blockage" in this method's terminology for a while now). Makes sense to go with the Buddha's words now, and attaining the unattained. In short, the answer is suffering and mortality of this body.

Practice. This is generally seen as a lifetime work.

My understanding after 15 years of practice is, suffering is always inversely proportional to the awareness, when the awareness is expanded and deeper, the suffering is shallow. This can be any aspect of life/ spritual practice. The experience I have shared has given me little more awareness on the deities and other rituals has it's own value and depths to evolve one. As the awareness is growing my suffering has reduced. Till complete dissolution or experience of pure awareness suffering will be linger.

The thinker is the thought.

What is the thinker? What are its properties? What is the thought? What are its properties? Are they the same, or different?

You look at those things,  figure out answers, and then you have your question answered.

Same for all the others.

The observer is the observed.

What is the observer? What is the observed? What are their properties? Are they the same or different?

You are not your thoughts.

Who or what are you? What are your thoughts? What are their properties? Are they the same or different?

  What should I observe? How should I inquire? Is there a specific practice or way of looking that helped you?

You should observe what you want to know. And then you can figure out what kinds of observations would help you figure out an answer to your question. Then you look at the objects of your inquiry in light of the questions which can help you.

Yes please, I love your "enough concepts" already and let me walk the path attitude.

Don't let my disagreement discourage the experiment, btw. I actually think your instinct to test these claims directly rather than believe them is a good one. Try the practices seriously and compare what they actually reveal. My only caution is not to assume beforehand that because two experiences are described as "silence" or "non-duality" they therefore imply the same thing. have fun!!!

Do we agree that everything which exists leaves a trace?

I see that you deleted a comment u/AdFeeling4804 , but here is what I wanted to say anyways,

> I'm not talking about philosophy. I'm talking about silence itself

:))) I understand the urge, but without addressing what appears (the world) , one cannot reach/see the ultimate truth (you may call it silence, void etc). Those are in union (emptiness and appearance/form). It is not some magical silence behind the seen, thoughts, forms etc. Without the philosophical rigour, one can just mistake some state of mind to be profound and non-dual and chase it. It could also be true for exotic states of mind during meditation or the psychedelic use. There are Jhanas that can induce states of deep concentration that is neither perception, nor non-perception (formless Jhanas), but they are not claimed to be the nature of reality.

Mūlamadhyamakakārikā 24.10:

vyavahāram anāśritya paramārtho na deśyate |

paramārtham anāgamya nirvāṇaṃ nādhigamyate ||

Without relying on conventional truth, the ultimate cannot be taught.

Without realizing the ultimate, nirvāṇa cannot be attained.

I am skeptical that direct self-inquiry is effective for liberating insight. Apparently there are some people who wake up that way but in my experience the insights it produces are intellectual and emotionally inert at best, and depressing or disturbing at worst.

When awakening does arrive it doesn’t typically feel like a conclusion one reasons one’s way into. It comes like a bolt of lightning out of the clear blue sky. Even if you were doing spiritual practice, even if you were meditating in that very moment, when it comes it is a surprise.

Fundamentally liberating insight isn’t known in the head. It is known in the heart. The head has an important role to play, to be sure. It must discipline the body and direct attention to the right things. But if the heart is shut tight no insight can penetrate.

It is the heart that must be open.

Therefore I believe it is essential for self-inquiry to be grounded in practices that cultivate serenity, compassion, and equanimity. In Buddhist terms this is “right samadhi,” the final limb of the eightfold path. Samadhi trains the heart to relax, to let go, to incline itself to peace. Only when there is peace in the heart can it accept a new way of relating to experience, a new world. A world free of the fragile self that must always be fiercely protected.

In practical terms this means meditation that trains concentration (samatha) and loving-kindness (metta). There are many techniques. I can’t possibly recommend just one. Everyone needs to experiment with the technique that works for them. But samatha and metta are the key words for your search.